This invention relates generally to catheters, and more specifically to an assembly and method that may be used for delivering and deploying one or more implantable medical devices, including without limitation, stents, grafts, stent-grafts, vena cava filters, or other implantable medical devices within a body lumen.
When advancing a catheter through a body lumen radiopaque marker bands are sometimes contained within the tips in order to better locate the position of the catheter during a medical procedure.
Delivery catheters, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,007,543 and incorporated herein by reference, are known in the art. Such catheters may include radiopaque marker bands and stent securement rings as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,530,947, U.S. Pat. No. 6,315,790 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,395,008, also incorporated by reference.
Some known catheter tips that are equipped with marker bands are injection molded such that the outside diameter of the marker band is molded into the tip while the interior diameter of the marker band is exposed to an inner or guidewire lumen. This exposure makes the marker band vulnerable to being dislodged or damaged while being inserted over a guidewire or when retracting the guidewire, thereby posing a safety hazard.
The art referred to and/or described above is not intended to constitute an admission that any patent, publication or other information referred to herein is “prior art” with respect to this invention. In addition, this section should not be construed to mean that a search has been made or that no other pertinent information as defined in 37 C.F.R. §1.56(a) exists.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.